Oddball observations

Tag Archives: human rights

I believe us humans learn how to behave, and a certain amount of our moral compass from stories, either family stories, books, tv – think Friends, songs, film etc.

So by sticking our male children from 10-20+ in front of a story that is or similar to Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty for hours and days at a time (unlike a single story book) what can we expect from them as adults. It amazes me they can function in the real world at all after almost total submersion with their peers into a world of sex, violence and narcissism.

I’m not saying they will all be serial killers but their out- look on the every day minutae of life will be framed by the stories they have been submerged in. Expectations of relationships and how to treat women, the ability to just restart if something goes wrong. How to treat fellow humans that get in your way. It scares me.

The other day I realised that living as a Chattel gave me certain freedoms, ironically as a Chattel by definition is being someone’s property/slave.

Let’s be clear I do not want to be a Chattel and hate this Victorian law that labels me as my ex husbands property until I remarry, he settles or either of us die (although he can do what he likes).

However there are certain perks, the primary one is I don’t have to be anyone else’s chattel, I can not make the same mistake again. No rushing into marriage or co-habitation for me. My codependent and romantic nature cries out to be some bodies ‘the one’, but my chattel status removes my ability to form a committed relationship, so I don’t have to commit, or worry if I’m sure or doing the right thing and neither does a lover. The stakes are so high I can live in a permanent state of never having to risk being owned by anyone else.

I could remarry and lose the stake in a business I helped set up but I’m not going to give away what’s rightfully mine for a marriage that despite my commitment could be thrown away by someone else’s wandering cock, like last time. I don’t have young children and won’t have more, so the need for marriage isn’t there. I admit my conditioned nature of social norms sometimes dreams of marriage and happy ever after but my chattel status squashes that down to an uncomfortable niggle. People change and I’m not sure if I want to or need to take that risk again. My chattel status gives me (and any lover I have) the perfect excuse to never address the future, to live in the moment.

When your options are reduced life becomes simpler, freedom? Why would I want that?

At 27 they start a family and decide that one will give up her career to bring up their family in the way they both want.

Business goes really well. One works full time while the other rears the growing family and supports her partner in the business.

At 45 the partner that works in the business full time has an affair and wants to end the marriage.

Now what do you think happens?

Their assets get split equally and both move house.

The partner who has control of the business gets a big mortgage and continues a very lavish lifestyle. The child rearer can not get a mortgage so lives frugally within her means.

But what about the business? The partner that cheated keeps the business while the other now non-skilled partner gets a payment each month from the business. The court decides 4% of the business profit. Which is just enough to live on, the cheating partner gets to keep 96% of a thriving business.

The law dictates that the partner that now owns the business can have intimate relationships and remarry without any consequence. The non skilled partner can only co-habit or remarry if she forgoes her monthly payments from the business (that she helped set up and enabled the controlling partner to succeed at whilst having a family as well). The controlling partner could opt for a final settlement but that doesn’t make financial sense, this way she has a loan that might just dissapear and has no interest. She also gets to control her ex’s life.

That is the law as it stands today for hetrosexuals. I don’t think gay people will stand for this in their relationships.

This happens in hetrosexual relationships because in uk law today women are regarded as chattels when they marry.

Our future is to be driverless cars which although a bit scary is incredibly exciting, the question is should they be driverless cars like cars were horseless carriages or should we be thinking bigger and more originally than that?

I see a transport revolution, many jobs will be lost, taxi drivers, lorry drivers, transport police so it will be painful but it will be a world where no one breaks transport law, no parking on double yellows, speeding or traffic light running. Less accidents so the ambulance, fire and police services will be able to concentrate on other things. No petrol stations no having to go to food shop, will we all become agoraphobic?

The kids can be taken to school and you can go to work. No one to drive so your work day can start the moment you get in the car, probably with a coffee machine instead of a driving wheel. No more parking problems, the car can drop you off then take itself off for other journeys or wait in an out of town park waiting for your call.

Thinking big though, should we be thinking this is the end of car ownership? Instead a subscription service, you pay your subscription and order a car for your daily commute, a computer can work out all the journeys of every commuter so you always get to work on time. You book a car like taxi. To go out to a rural pub, you can both drink, country pubs take note in 10 years you will enjoy the fruits of this revolution.

Still there needs to be thought into the downsides, I could send a car to take my mum to her frequent hospital appointments but our older generation is lonely as it is, me and my mum still enjoy seeing each other on these visits, the school run has been a useful time to prepare my kids for their day ahead and ‘download’ on their way home the events of the day. The job losses will be far reaching. The lack of individual expression in our cars could have negative side effects – who doesn’t smile at an old classic driving by or even a young driver with their blinged up banger? But there are huge positives that we can’t ignore, but I would hope it could be thought through in a creative, innovative way instead of an adaption of something we already have.

My new partner and I were cooking pizza after a hard day. I had pre heated the oven, he unwrapped and I placed them on the shelf un be known to me he set the timer on his watch. We were cold and sat in the next room by the fire and were enjoying a discussion on a recent political event.Suddenly I smelt the burnt pizza, we both rushed in and they were both burnt to a charcoal mess. I looked at him as I apologised waiting for the onslaught I was used to in my marriage to the Narcissist. You idiot, what on earth will we eat tonight, why didn’t you time it, what a waste of money… Blah blah blah. Instead I got, I’m sorry it’s my fault, I set a timer but was so enjoying our discussion I forgot. Seamlessly we both apologised and moved on to scrabbling a few left overs together and a makeshift meal, continuing our discussion and reflecting how our respective ex’s would have been angry or stormed out and blamed us – who were only too ready to take full responsibility.So if you are in a new relationship I strongly recommend a burnt pizza test before you commit, just to find out who/what you are dealing with.

The assumption is that it’s the woman’s wage that pays for the childcare. Even if the money goes into the same pot, the joint account, in our thoughts, women earn their salary less the childcare. I don’t know any men that think they pay even half the childcare if their children’s mother works.

It really bugs me the ingrained misogyny that us girls utter ourselves and buy into. I heard one radio dj interviewing a female singer who had recently given birth, his first question was – who’s looking after the baby? I know he would not ask that of a male singer who’d recently had a child. I wish she had asked him back who was looking after his.

Jeremy Vine recently mocked that Ed Milliband didn’t know what his wife spent on the weekly shop. How funny but even worse is that Jeremy Vine assumes it’s the wife’s job to the shop and the husbands to check what she’s spending. We should search out and challenge these assumptions we have inherited.

One legal definition of cohabitation is living together as man and wife. So after 25 years of marriage I should be well qualified on what that feels like?

So to me that means a sexless relationship, possibly once or twice a year.

A relationship where I am scared and dominated and kept in my place, a doormat.

It means my cohabitee does whatever he likes, goes away for weeks at a time on ‘boys trips’ that end up in a brothel. Arrives home in the early hours and if I dare to question I’m in the wrong and if I ask again he will be unfaithful as that’s what I deserve for being suspicious.

It means his car is an Aston Martin and top of the range land rover, my car he lends to me is a Clio.

It means he rarely interacts with the children and does not think about their needs.

He doesn’t have any child care responsibilities.

He gets very drunk every Friday night and Saturday night and is too hungover to participate in any weekend family time. If he’s even about.

It means he’s too busy to take phone calls from me or the kids.

It means I am a housekeeper.

A place where I have no financial control.

I was never more alone than when I was married.

So no I do not want to marry or cohabit, I never want to be that person again.